“Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and its IC design service partner Global UniChip have secured a three-year agreement with Apple to supply foundry services for the next A-series chips built using 20nm, 16nm and 10nm process nodes, according to industry sources,” Josephine Lien and Jessie Shen report for DigiTimes.
“TSMC will start to manufacture Apple’s A8 chips in small volume in July 2013, and substantially ramp up its 20nm production capacity after December, the sources revealed,” Lien and Shen report. “TSMC is scheduled to volume produce the Apple A9 and A9X processors starting the end of third-quarter 2014, the sources said.”
Lien and Shen report, “The upcoming Apple A8 processor will be found in a new iPhone slated for release in early 2014, and the A9/A9X chips will be used in the newer-generation iPhone and iPad products, the sources claimed… The sources did not identify whether TSMC will be the sole supplier of these Apple-designed chips.
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: What about the A8X?
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
If Apple is assigning production for the A8 and A9 series to TSMC, I would venture to guess that the A7 is a moderate update to existing design. Guessing again, that the A8 is the new family that would be capable of the A265 format for 4k video and processor with, perhaps, compressed memory like the desktop. I would not expect Aplle to release a next gereration design to Samsung so they could preview any radical departure from current A series. Samsung would be able to counter the A8 or understand Apple’s future direction.
DigiTimes reporting anonymous “industry sources”
Oh well then… it has to be authentic.
If it means samdung is not making chips then I’m all for it.
So does this mean the Fall ’13 line will not be substantively more powerful than the current iPhone 5 & iPad 4? I’ve early adopted every maxed outiPhone & iPad (except non-retina mini) since 2008 including the October 2012 64GB iPad 4 early 2013 128GB iPad 4. Will this be the first year I pass on the next models or will there still be compelling reasons to continue to early adopt in September?